A CAMPAIGNER who battled against Donald Trump's new golf resort in Scotland has urged MSPs to launch a public inquiry into how the project was given the green light.

David Milne, who lives on the Menie Estate in Aberdeenshire which was bought by Trump to build his resort on, also presented a 19,000-strong petition to Holyrood's Public Petitions Committee as he made his case for a new inquiry.

Part of the Menie Estate incorporated a Site of Special Scientific Interest but Trump's £750million luxury golf resort was approved in 2008 and finally opened last summer.

Trump's planning application was initially rejected by a local authority committee but was then controversially called in by the Scottish Government – the first time this had happened.

The plan was subsequently rubber-stamped by the council, then approved by Finance Secretary John Swinney in November 2008.

A planning inquiry and a Holyrood committee inquiry have already taken place but Mr Milne – who appeared in the award-winning ‘You’ve Been Trumped documentary’ which charted the scheme’s development – believes huge questions remain over how the planning process was handled by the authorities at the time.

Mr Milne specifically called for the behaviour of the local council and police force to be scrutinised as he raised concerns that councillors were “lobbied” by backers of the controversial development in breach of strict planning rules and that police in the area were biased in favour of the plans.

He said: "New information has come forward, including the footage from the film 'You've Been Trumped'.

"It would also be useful to look at the process and outcome of the initial public inquiry.

"This is about good governance, about the way planning rules are set and managed and making sure relationships between officials and developers are kept within appropriate bounds.

"It's about the protections the planning system is meant to provide to communities like ours and to environments like the destroyed Site of Special Scientific Interest at Menie.

"The behaviour of the police also requires review and investigation while I'd like to see councillors in future thinking twice before accepting hospitality at an opening event and failing to record this in the appropriate registers."

SNP MSP John Wilson, the deputy convener of the committee, agreed to keep the petition open and said it was only fair to give public bodies the chance to respond.

He said: "There have been a number of inferences to public bodies in terms of the evidence we've heard this morning.

"The organisations, which include Aberdeenshire Council, Scottish Natural Heritage, Marine Scotland and Grampian Police have been named today as organisations which either overstepped the bounds or acted with impropriety in their conduct with the residents in the Menie Estate.

"These public bodies have a right to respond to the petition and to some of the comments that have been made."